In conventional, as techniques in which a robot follows up a human, which is a subject to be followed, can be mentioned (1) “a movable robot which follows up a user”, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-166822, (2) “a robot for following a wandering aged person” as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-73582, and (3) “a control apparatus and a control process for a robot which is moved with legs as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-205290.
In the technique disclosed in the patent publication (1), “the movable robot which follows up a user” follows a source for an infrared light, put on the user, which is a subject to be followed.
In the technique disclosed in the patent publication (2), “the robot for following a wandering aged person” only follows a human to be followed up, and the robot cannot keep up with cases where the robot loses the sight of the subject to be followed up and where the walk speed of the subject is faster than that of the robot.
In the technique disclosed in the patent publication (3), if something is wrong with input data, which are inputted to the robot which is moved with legs via a sensor or such (in the case where a quantity of light from the light source exceeds a given value, in the case where the robot wants to confirm the face image of the person to be followed up, and the like), an improvement movement are performed for improving the input data (for example, blocking of the quantity of light from the light source over a hand, outputting a sound to turn the subject to be followed up towards the robot (speaking).
However, in the control of the movable robots (following-up robots) disclosed in the patent publications (1) and (2), there is a tendency to specially characterize the function for following up a person, which is the subject of following-up. In the control of the movable robot disclosed in the patent publication (3), no function for following up a person, which is the subject to be followed up, is provided. Specifically, in the conventional configurations, a problem occurs that while the robot can follow up a person, which is the subject to be followed up, the robot cannot make a sufficient communication with the person.
An object of the present invention is, therefore, to solve the problems associated with the conventional techniques and to provide an apparatus, process, and a program for controlling a movable robot, which can control the movable robot so that while the robot can make a sufficient communication with a person, which is the subject to be followed up, the robot can follow up the subject to be followed up, i.e., so that the robot can smoothly move with following up the subject.